Fear and Comfort
by okh-eshivar
Summary: Robin suffers a nightmare involving her mother, and Nami recieves a misguided blow at her hand. Although forgiveness comes easy, can Robin work through it enough to forgive herself? Contains Robin/Nami, some fluffy stuff, and some horror/angst


A/N: I guess I really like writing about nightmares, huh ^_^; ? The Poison Ivy one, and the Nanao one, and the other Robin one...Well, it's fun!

Disclaimer: I do not own One Piece.

Comments are always appreciated, of course.

Burning.

Everything is burning. Everything is hot and scalds at a feather's touch. The air goes stale and burnt and sticks to the tongue and scratches at the throat. It feels like she's swallowing ashes and fiery coals. Maybe she is. Maybe the soot will run into her stomach or her heart and stop her dead. Maybe the poison from the gas will squeeze around her lungs and push the breath from her thin, running form. Maybe the thick black smoke will swallow her whole, consume her with teeth made of gunpowder and death, and spit her bones out into the sea where they would sink and be forever forgotten. A root grabs onto her slim ankle with fingers of barbed wire and maggots as she bounds over it.

She trips.

She falls, and the earth betrays her. It cracks open beneath her falling form and gives way, shattering like glass around her. She falls. She falls. She falls into the darkness and into the sea and is pulled beneath the surface by the hands of her mother, her eyes gentle and warm and welcoming and her grip solid and inhuman.

"Robin..." she whispers softly her alabaster hair floating around them like a glorious halo. "Robin..."

'Mother...? The little girl speaks with a voice that doesn't sound right, and doesn't sound wrong. She is still sinking deeper and deeper into the abyss; when she opens her mouth the water does not wash through her throat. It is as if there is no water at all.

No water, and no air. She still can't breathe. She's been holding her breath for a long time. Her chest is on fire and her throat is closing up, and although she fights in the woman's grip she cannot free herself.

'Mother...I can't breathe...Please let me go...!'

"Robin..." She continues to whisper. Somehow the little girl knows she cannot hear her pleas. "Robin...my daughter..."

'Mother...please let go...I'm dying...!' The words sound strange and stuck in her throat the same way the burnt air did on land. She was dying?

"My daughter...I must save my daughter...Robin..." Her smile was fading, and tears were beginning to stream down her cheeks, the droplets plucked from her eyelashes and into the air above them. Were they sinking or falling? "I must save Robin..."

'Mother, I'm here! You must let go, you're killing me...' Her vision was going dark, and the woman whose grip trapped her between oblivion and a thousand miles of water was beginning to look more and more desperate. It was as if she wasn't even aware she held the daughter already. It was as if she wasn't aware that she was drowning her.

"Robin...I..." The tears that had flown freely from her teal eyes were beginning to run a deep red, a blood red, a liquid that emerged also from her mouth and nose in thin, currented streams.

"...I..." The ivory haired woman paused, her neck lolling forward, the white locks falling to cover her bleeding face in a frenzy of flowing strands. Within her grip, the young girl stopped pulling, stopped kicking and yelling and struggling, and was suddenly brought into a state of erie stillness. Her mind ceased its rampant confusion, and her body reeled about no more. In her lungs, the last mouthful of precious oxygen left with an exhausted shudder. In this last second of concsiousness, her eyes bared deeply into those of her mother's, shocking blue lightning against a clear, cloudless sky. In those eyes she saw a library, a cathedral of unread texts of something greater than that of the history they had both studied over the years, a novel of agony and pain and precious secrets that would disappear the second she did, forever lost.

Behind her, a small ringing noise erupted from the empty space around them, at first too quiet to hear, then growing louder quickly, like the scream of a bullet just before it brushes passed a person's ear.

Louder...louder...

If she had possessed the strength she would have covered her ears in a futile attempt to shroud the painful sound. She continued only to watch her mother's face as the woman still tried to speak, words that were understandable by the motion her moving lips.

'I'm...sorry..." The shriek was mind numbing now, a boiling tea kettle amplified by one hundred thousand decibels of raw, sheering noise.

Louder...Louder...

'...so sorry...' A harsh, blinding light tore through the dark abyss suddenly, enveloping both of them in white.

Louder...louder...brighter...

She let a sharp, bloody screech of a single word rip forth from her lips, impossibly audible over the agonizing sound. A single, tortured, tormented, cursed word...

"ROBIN!"

The woman woke with a slight start, her ebony hair creating a halo of darkness around her startled features against the milk fabric of her pillowcase. Her bright blue eyes were open wide in an expression of pure terror, as if she had just seen into the fire of Hell itself, and her entire body was coated in a thin layer of persperation. Beside her, a young redhead was knelt on the bed space to her left, both of her hands planted firmly on Robin's shoulders and lightly shaking them. The sight of the familiar face above her calmed Robin's rushing blood if only in the slightest. Against the girl's features was a look of worry and concern.

"Thank god you're awake!" she cried a bit too loudly. Robin resisted the urge to flinch at the sudden noise, suddenly reminded of that horrid shriek...

"Nami...?" She blinked in the dimmness of the night that surrounded them, and with better focused eyes spotted a stray mark painted across the girl's right cheek. With measured care she reached up, and caressed the mark with her fingertips lightly.

"Did I...?" Nami placed a hand over Robin's and pressed it closer to her cheek, smiling slightly.

"It's alright. It was an accident, after all. I probably shouldn't have tried to wake you the way I did." She lay back beside her and brushed the hair from her lover's eyes, wrapping an arm around her waist and resting her head on Robin's shoulder lightly.

"I'm sorry..." The phrase reawakening an angry flash of memories from her recent ordeal. '...so sorry...'

"Hey..." -she nuzzled the black haired woman in the crooked of her neck gently- "Don't apologize for that. You can't control what you do in your sleep, you know. It wasn't your fault.'

Robin remained in comfortable silence, focusing her attention solely on the woman's warm breath against her rigid muscles. The sensation relaxed her enough to return the embrace, pulling her closer, fitting their bodies comfortably together. She kissed the mark lightly, a mere feather's touch, and brushed her lips against the other woman's, teasing her with the scent of lavender and spring water. Nami smiled into the kiss, and deepened it tenderly, placing a hand at the back of her neck to hold her closer. They parted with the slowness and tenderness of two clouds, seperated by a calm summer breeze.

"Well?"

"mmm?"

"Do you want to talk about it?"

Robin looked into the ember eyes of her lover, then let her eyelids surround her vision. "Not now, not now. Later, perhaps."

"In the morning." Nami confirmed dominately.

"...Perhaps."

The redhead, in a sudden flurry of movement, mounted herself atop Robin's waist, straddling her and leaning her elbows on either side of the woman's head. Her expression was tinged slightly with frustration, mostly with a subtly hidden worry.

"No, not 'perhaps'. You are going to tell me about it in the morning. Got it?" She feigned a glare, but dropped the facade the moment Robin's amused giggle reached her ears.

"Yes, yes. In the morning."

Nami settled back into the embrace, and within moments was returned to her peaceful slumber. Robin curled around her sleeping form, almost protectively, her smile wilting into a small line. She brushed the fading mark again with her lips again.

"...Perhaps."

A/N: I guess it could be a oneshot but...what do you guys think? 


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